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The REBEL

Published by the Student Government Association of East Carolina College. Created by the Pub-
lications Board of East Carolina College as a literary magazine to be edited by students and de-
signed for the publication of student material.

VOLUME 4 FALL, 1960 NUMBER 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
EDITORIAL 7
Editor REBEL YELL 8
Roy MARTIN
2 ‘aaa FEATURE
USINESS ° :
ai ciis iating Interview With Harry Golden—Part I 3
Managing Editor FICTION
Jessie ELLINGTON Moore Gagged To Death by John Quinn... 11
‘acbemdttor Larryman by Lyman Harris 15
NELSON DUDLEY POETRY
Book Review Editor The Love Letter by Sarah Hansen 5
ee Night, The Red Light, Waves by Denyse Dr=per_..__— 9
Exchange Editor 1. Mia Soutes by Tonk Ieee a 14
CAROLISTA FLETCHER
Asst. Exchange Editor ART
dink wee heals “Tobacco Market” (Linoleum Cut) by Al Dunkle. 2
% : “The Resting One” (Lithograph) by Nelson Dudley__..____ 6
as Setaihateain yuan “Untitled” (Woodcut) by Ed Musgrave. 10
DENYSE DRAPER i
“The Women” (Lithograph) by Jim Roper_..____»_»»_»_»>»>>_ 18
Assistant to the Editor “Time Of” CWoodeut) by Al: Dunkle: 4 20
cage Welt.te “The Waiting One’ (Woodcut) by Karen McLawhorn_.. 23
Advertising Manager “Desolation” (Woodcut) by Linda Keffler_...__---_-_»-_-_-_
B. Totson WIx1Is, Jr. “Untitled” (Lithograph) by Jim Roper 26
esta dies “Southern Gothic” (Lithograph) by Nelson Dudley... 28
Otw Wiis Paces “Heading Home” (Linoleum Cut) by Al Dunkle________. 30
“The Pick-up” (Woodcut) by Al Dunkle Si
Circulation and Advertisement
ALPHIA PHI OMEGA FRATERNITY REBEL REVIEW 19-27
Wational Ademtict Reviews by Sherry Maske, Dr. Edgar Hirshberg, Jack Willis,
Representatives Denyse Draper, Dr. Roy Prince, Dr. Frances R.
CoLLece Macazines, INc. Winkler and Staff.
405 Lexington Ave.
New York 17, N. Y. COVER by Robert Harper and Nelson Dudley

NOTICE—Contributions to THE REBEL should be directed to P.O. Box 1420, E. C.C. Editorial and business offices are located
at 309% Austin Building. Manuscripts and artwork submitted by mail should be accompanied by a self-addressed envelope
and return postage. The publishers assume no responsibility for the return of manuscripts or artwork.

by AL DUNKLE
THE REBEL

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“Tobacco Market’

Interview With

HARRY GOLDEN

Note: The following interview will be printed
in two installments, the second to be printed in
the Winter Issue, and the opinions expressed
herein do not necessarily reflect the views of
the staff or of the administration of the College.

Interviewer: Do you consider humor your most
effective instrument in satire?

Mr. Golden: Well, I would say that humor and
satire are the most effective instruments in all
writing. Whether I have been able to achieve it to
any great degree, I am not certain yet—I have
certainly tried for it. Perhaps, in some areas of
thought, I have seen some effectiveness. For ex-
ample, I do not know of any other speaker in the
South, speaking against the continued segregation
of the Negro, who has been invited to speak before
so many Southern forums. I’ve spoken in Ala-
bama, Mississippi, Texas, and certainly all over
North Carolina and Virginia, and have been greet-
ed with great warmth. I think this is due to the
fact that my speech or forms of expression are in
terms of a bit of humor ... and this helps a great
deal. This does not mean that I compromise my
views in any way, but the presentation of them
in the form of some humor has helped greatly—
not only in the acceptance of them, but also, per-
haps, in their effectiveness. Take, for example,
the Negro Vertical Plan, which I promoted before
the North Carolina Legislature some years ago.
It was a bit of humor... at least an attempt at it.
When Kresses’ Department Store was having trou-
ble in High Point, the manager received a wire
from the New York office, which said “Put in the
Golden Vertical Plan!’ And so, they took the
seats out of the snack bar, and everybody stood

FALL, 1960

up, and ate and drank like mad, and nobody got
angry about anything—and that is the way it
worked.

They never would invite anyone to make
speeches such as I have, who is going to deliver
a speech against racial segregation as such. How-
ever, they will invite a guy who might make them
laugh a little bit. I still give them a straight-down-
the-line speech just the same. This is a big help.

Interviewer: Do you consider provincialism pri-
marily a characteristic of southern life?

Mr. Golden: Well, I would say that the atmos-
phere of provincialism is slowly, but surely dis-
appearing from southern life—if we understand
provincialism. Essentially, provincialism is the
attitude in which people are concerned purely with
their own affairs. It comes from the idea of some-
one from the provinces, which to the urban dwell-
ers meant people who live in rural sections of the
country, and who are interested primarily in their
own local affairs. I think this is disappearing in
the South. The South is undergoing a tremendous
urbanization and industrialization, which is strik-
ing down the idea of provincialism.

Fortunately for me, of course, I have seen this
change in North Carolina, which added tremen-
dously to my opportunity as an observer, reporter
and writer. These last twenty-one years have pro-
duced in North Carolina, and elsewhere in the
South, what I think is the greatest domestic story
of the twentieth century. I am speaking of the
change of the last agrarian civilization into an
urban-industrial civilization. Much of this has
happened during the twenty years I have been in
North Carolina. As a matter of actual statistics,

<4 3

(since I am writing about this very thing, I am
familiar with these figures) in 1940, North Caro-
lina was 65% farm and 35% industrial. In 1960,
it is exactly the reverse. This is a fantastic change
in the culture of a great sovereign state, and you
can multiply this by the other states of the entire
old South.

While the industrialization and urbanization
have not been as striking as in North Carolina,
they had been going at a pretty rapid pace. Even
your rural areas today have become semi-urban-
ized, semi-industrialized, since the establishment
of the rural road program by Governor Scott,
about seven or eight years ago. The resulting ef-
fects of this program have enabled the people to
come into town from even the most rural areas.
The last figures I had on this from the State De-
partment of Labor show that over 50% of the
rural farms in North Carolina, which are still
rural and still farming, have at least one member
of the family taking that road every morning to
work in a factory in a nearby city. In some fami-
lies, the children go into the factories every morn-
ing, so that the family’s income today is derived
from the industrial-urban society as well as the
farm. So the industrialization may be greater
than the figures show.

Interviewer: Do you think that the Negro-
White question, framed as a conflict, will be a
chief source of material for much durable writing?

Mr. Golden: Of course it will be a source. Out
of all controversy, struggle, and pain have come
our most valuable writings. We already have evi-
dences of this in the great body of writings, which
have come out of the South concerning the racial
question. We will have much, much more. We
will have some great novels coming of this inte-
gration struggle of the Negro. The Negroes them-
selves — the Southern Negroes — will begin to
write. Many of them are at it now. In addition,
this whole racial problem in the South, since the
Supreme Court struck down racial segregation,
will also become a part of the literature of what
we have discussed here . . . the end of the last
great agricultural civilization on this continent
and the urbanization of the South. This will pro-
duce a major body of work, and I believe the
South will continue to produce the best American
writing during the next twenty-five years.

Interviewer: Has religion in history been so
great a source of intolerance as racial differences,
or are the two indistinguishable?

4

Mr. Golden: Religious intolerance has caused
many wars and many sorrows. I think, however,
it goes deeper than the term “religious intoler-
ance.” When you deal in matters of hatred and
massacre and murder, you must probe for deeper
meanings than the mere dislike of one man for
another man’s religion.

The Moslems started at the Arabian sands and
swept across the world to the Gates of Hercules
and up to Spain. They were finally stopped at
Tours, but in the process of those few centuries,
millions of “unbelievers” were killed.

You have had the One Hundred Years War,
essentially a struggle between Protestantism and
Roman Catholicism, and the burning of John Huss,
the massacre of St. Bartholemew, the terror
against the Huguenots, the murders of “Papists”
in Calvinist Scotland, the Catholic Inquisition
against heretics. In our country, we burned
Catholic convents in New England, killed Baptists
in Virginia and chased the Mormons across the
continent, killing some, burning the camps of
most of them as they stopped to take a breather
for a night—you run out of breath in the recital,
don’t you—endless, isn’t it? And because I am a
polite sort of fellow, I haven’t even mentioned
what the Christian world has done to the Jews
since the First Century with ghettoes, distinctive
garments, dunce caps, confiscation, restriction, iso-
lation, and massacre—massacre in nearly every
century—small massacres, practice for the mur-
der of six million in 1939 to 1945—in an era in
which we already had brass plumbing, Mickey
Rooney, and white wall tires.

I said it goes deeper than your term “religious
intolerance.” Of course it does! First of all is the
lack of conviction—that is basic. When a man
feels CERTAIN of his faith—he does not kill
someone else who does not believe in the same
faith—he pities him—he feels sorry for him.
“Look at that poor felow. He can grab himself a
fistful of eternity and salvation and he doesn’t
have the brains to do it.”

... Of course, pity, sympathy. But when you get
angry at him instead of pitying him, when you
grab him by the lapels and shout, “Why don’t
you believe as I do, you son of a bitch—hbelieve,
believe as I do, you bastard—come into my camp
or I’ll kill you.” . . . When a fellow says that, as
fellows have said it for a few thousand years—
then you can be sure he is not certain about his
faith. He wants company. He wants to do some-
thing to strengthen that belief of his—he wants to
reassure himself. Why the hell is that guy out of
my fold? he says. And this disturbs the hell out

THE REBEL

of him. Actually religious hatred is the result of
many causes, caste, fear of the stranger, myth,
fear of economic competition, many causes, but
basic to it—at its foundation, if hate and massacre
can be said to have a foundation,—at the founda-
tion of religious intolerance, as you put it, is—
lack of faith on the part of the one who does the
hating, does the intolerating. Lack of faith—un-
certainty breeds fear.

At many levels of our history, religious intoler-
ance and racial hatred have been the same thing,
although fear of the black man has been a uni-
versal myth. And here I do not refer to the South-
erners specifically. All cultures in the world—the
white races—have had this deep-seeded fear and
hatred of the black man. When mothers frighten-
ed their children with scary stories, the stories
involved the bogey man—who was always black—
in my own Jewish culture the worst thing you
can say—is a black year on you—black—you
should see only black—is a curse of the Slavic
peoples everywhere in Europe—Renan once said
that the reason the Germans were such violent
anti-Semites is that they do not have the black
man—the Jew becomes the surrogate for the
Negro. I have seen that happen right here in
America—I have seen it happen in Alabama,
where hatred of the Negro was transferred to the
Jew, even when that Jew was an ardent white
supremacist, and was supporting the White Citi-
zens Council. Amazing. I always tell the Jews: It
won’t help you. Nothing will help you when you
try to reflect the prejudices of the society in
which you live—you might just as well be a hu-
manitarian—you’ll get the rap for it anyway.

Here, too, racial hatred is a matter of fear...
and since it involves the renunciation of logic, no
logic can prevail against it. For example, every
minority race everywhere has been “accused” of

special sexual prowess—the early anti-Semitic
writers spoke of the voluptuous Jewess, and they
wrote of it, smacking their lips, and gave you the
impression of a rape and a massacre—and the
Negro—we are obsessed with our fear of his sex—
the history of our lynchings during the early part
of this century is also a history of mutilated geni-
tals—mutilated even when the alleged crime was
robbery or even when the Negro was lynched be-
cause of a violent argument with his “boss man.”
Sex ... and every minority has been accused of
it— this is part of the myth and no logic can pre-
vail against it. For instance, you can—look here,
during the Civil War the Southerner left three
million blacks behind with their women, the white
woman, and nothing happened—as a matter of
fact we have wonderful, wonderful stories of
Negro men protecting the white women against
marauding Union soldiers. But such an argument
gets you nowhere, when you have this fear and
these myths by the tail . . . here, too, the reasons
involve economics, fear of competition, a sense of
guilt and caste—but mostly caste. When a man
feels himself to be inadequate, he needs someone
below him on the “totem pole”. If you take the
Negro away from him, where will he find his
caste? Ah, and here you have the reason that the
upper middle class turned on the Negro, after the
Supreme Court decision. Certainly, the upper
middle class does not fear social or economic com-
petition from the Negro, but the thought of the
millions of southerners, who do need this CASTE,
and if the Negro is gone, where will he get his
caste? He will get it in the labor unions, and he
will begin to vote and he will do a million things
within his community which the big man would
like him not to do. He will rock the boat and that
is bad for many people, who do not want the
boat rocked.

the Love Letter

It is a love letter

Blurred and mysterious,
Written in a delicate hand
By the mighty sea

To his brown mistress, earth.

If I could understand

This ageless message

Between these ageless two
The answer of life would come
To this intruder.

FALL, 1960

Oh to understand
This scribbling, scratching, scrawling
In the sand

It is not an etching

Made of salt and sun,
Nor is it the sand piper’s
Forgotten footprints.

—SARAH HANSEN

“The Resting One” (Lithograph) by NELSON DUDLEY

6 THE REBEL

A WORD SAID......

In recent years, East Carolina has made a steady
progression away from the nomenclature of
“Teachers’ College.” This has been a distinct
move—and rightly so, for no institution of higher
learning should arbitrarily be limited to one type
of curriculum. During the course of this tran-
sition period an upheaval in the cultural life here
has been evident. The recognition achieved by
individuals and departments prove this fact.

This recognition represents the evolvement of
a mature force on this campus which, if nurtured,
can be the motivating element behind the eventual
creation of an atmosphere at East Carolina, which
thrives upon a thirst for knowledge. We can-
not deny this force its right to exist. It is vital
to the future effectiveness of education, not only
at East Carolina, but also to any other institution
which has the potential for development of an
acute hunger for thought.

In the future development of this atmosphere
of learning, apathy exists as the most prominent
opposing factor. The apathy which prevails is
excusable with understanding. It is due to the
times and the type of environment in which we
live. In clarifying this, it can be said that today,
young people are well aware of the fact that to
“get ahead’, it is necessary to attend college. In
relation to this, what is even more important is
the existence of the fact that worthwhile employ-
ment is based primarily on the attainment of a
college degree. With this in mind, a great ma-
jority of college students receiving degrees each
year are earning just that—a degree. A vital
part of their education has been overshadowed
with the “get ahead” concept; thus apathy.

Here at East Carolina, before an atmosphere for
learning can be effectively created, it is necessary
to coordinate the “get ahead” concept with the
cultural elements of the campus. To this end, a
graduate of this school will receive a full educa-
tion—an education which will not only prepare

FALL, 1960

him to meet the obstacles which life poses, but
also will prepare him to interact with his con-
temporaries in a manner befitting a college
graduate.

How can this apathy be overcome? This is a
tremendous problem—tremendous in the sense
that an interest for creating an atmosphere for
learning must be created first. No man can be
forced to be interested in anything. He must
first be stimulated, and then the interest will de-
velop as a result of the stimuli. There have been
proposals offered here in past years, which em-
braced the desire to create a more improved in-
tellectual climate. There have been such moves as
the inauguration of competitive intramural intel-
lectual activity. In addition, there have been many
noted speakers brought to the campus, speaking
on subjects vital to the better understanding of
life for those who will one day be coping with the
problems which life projects. All these moves
met with little success, and were eventually aban-
doned.

As another example, this magazine, not only
in its infancy, but also at the present, is faced
with opposition questioning its worth in terms
of the expenditure of the student’s money. An
education cannot be measured in terms of mone-
tary value. This magazine and other moves, men-
tioned previously, are symbols of seeds which
have been planted in order eventually to create an
atmosphere of learning, motivated by the in-
quisitiveness of the human mind.

It is with these thoughts in mind that the
editors and others connected with this publication
dedicate their efforts, throughout this year and
in future years, to the development of an atmos-
phere which is dependent upon thought—thought
stimulated by an honest desire to consider, ex-
plore, and learn. And if we succeed in causing
only one individual to think . . . we have accomp-
lished our purpose.

—Roy M.

THE REBEL YELL

As in past years, The Rebel has made changes
with the coming of each new year. Many of these
changes were made in order to bring to the stu-
dents a product of student endeavor which would
enhance the reputation of East Carolina as an
educational institution of great merit.

Perhaps the most notable change in the maga-
zine is in the cover. In this issue, a photograph
will be used for material. In relation to this, any
student wishing to submit a photograph for pos-
sible cover use is invited to do so. The cover
photograph for this issue was done by Robert
Harper, former Art Editor of The Rebel, and
alumnus of East Carolina.

Another noticeable alteration in this issue’s
makeup is the inclusion of national advertising.
This, the editors believe, will add a distinctive note
to the appearance of the magazine.

As far as material is concerned, in this issue
the present editors have followed the policy set
by previous staffs, in presenting interviews with
some of North Carolina’s most distinguished writ-
ers. Although Harry Golden is not a native of
North Carolina, the editors feel fortunate in hav-
ing been able to obtain his remarks. The second
installment of the interview will follow in the
winter quarter.

The poetry section is composed of verse, writ-

ten by Denyse Draper, Tom Jackson, and Sara
Hansen. Denyse Draper was a second place win-
ner in last year’s writing contest. Jackson pre-
sents for publication his poem, “T.M.’s Solitude”,
while Sarah Hansen, a transfer from Montreat,
offers her prize winning poem, “The Love Letter’.
Miss Hansen was third award winner of the Olive
Tilford Dargan Prize in the Eleventh Annual
Poetry Day Contest, held October 15, in Asheville,
sponsored by the Asheville branch of the National
League of American Penwomen.

The short stories in this issue came from the
creative writing class. The authors, John Quinn
and Lyman Harris, have presented two outstand-
ing works, and the editors predict a promising
future for these two writers.

In the art section, past contributors Al Dunkle,
Jim Roper and Art Editor Nelson Dudley are
represented by a number of drawings. Linda Kef-
fer and Ed Musgrave are newcomers to the maga-
zine this quarter, and future work from these
artists will be forthcoming.

Reviews for this issue are by Pat Farmer,
Book Review Editor; Dr. Frances R. Winkler of
the English Department, Denyse Draper, Jack
Willis, a transfer from San Francisco State Col-
lege; Sherry Maske, Dr. Edgar Hirshberg, and
Dr. J. Roy Prince.

THE REBEL

Poetry

Night

I sat watching night
arrive to the garden,
Breath and being enclosed
tightly
inside myself so I
would not disturb it.

Ringed worshipful insects
Crouched
Stooped in miniature prologue
spewing
Myriad incantations to coming
shadow and image—
Night,
clutching swiftly
Proteus-like
Obscuring
Enveloping
with black profiles
j The temporal colors of day.

Ripe verdancy discarded,
The stippled garden thrust upward
moon-silver blossoms
Cradling their incense
with half-curled petals...
Welcoming the night.

FALL, 1960

by DENYSE DRAPER

Che Red Light

The red light stares sullenly
Hurry
You

Hurry across wet concrete streets

To safety.

(Step on reflections of yourself

in the rush—

It doesn’t matter.)

Up there a red light promises
safety

So clutch the promise tightly

And run.

Waves

The first wave caressed my feet softly
with delicate white fingers of foam

Then reluctantly withdrew, leaving

Myriad treasures sparkling on the sand
for me to fondle and store away.

The others that followed
Pulled at my toes
with impudent familiarity
Tickled the sand beneath them
into quivering laughter
Heartily smacked my knees
with pudgy white fists.

I soon grew weary of them
And left.

Untitled (Woodcut) by ED MUSGRAVES

10 THE REBEL

Gagged To Death

by JOHN QUINN

Perhaps it was because he was so quiet that
the bigger boss had called him over for an inter-
view at the main branch. During the bigger boss’
frequent visits to the mortgage branch, he had re-
mained studiously reticent, showing neither ap-
proach-ability nor respect, disguising himself. He
knew silence confused and often annoyed people.
Everyone knows, somehow, that talk is a form of
love. It must have been that way since men began
to grunt and moan at each other. He wondered
whether ants communicated by sounds their
myriad’s singular purpose; perhaps they had
some basic set of clicks or scrapes that only ants
could hear. He wondered what the bigger boss
wished to say to him, what he would say in return.

The young man had never been to the main
branch before. Perhaps he was going to be trans-
ferred there (was a transfer a promotion?). Per-
haps the bigger boss had not disliked his silence
but instead was merely transferring him for fur-
ther training to the main branch, to this main
building where other young men like himself
handed and received moneys over the long chest-
high marble counters, and counted and receipted
and classified.

The main branch was a vast, high-ceilinged,
marble-like edifice. The center floor space was an
enormous rectangle. The whole a curious vestigial
church, threatened by no other genus’ giant shoe.
It must have cost an enormous amount of money
to build.

He thought of the cold bright air outside. It
had snowed recently, and what remained had, in
the night, frozen fast. Yet it was pleasant and he
had not minded the cold. He always loved to be
outside in the mornings. He thought of the short

FALL, 1960

walk from the parking lot to the bank for the
interview, the frozen slush crunching hollowly
under his shoes. It was still beautiful, the mute,
far winter air, a buffer zone of light, where the
agents of time could not take him but must wait,
to which he could escape once more.

Waiting to see the bigger boss, he could en-
vision himself disgraced behind the marble coun-
ters, lost in the endless computations, guilty of
mistake upon mistake, unable even to feel, at
least, equal to his fellows.

The bank was not yet open for business. Em-
ployees were still coming in. He would look up to
see a young man he had known from the mortgage
branch, a transferee, had taken his place at the
first section of the north counter, nearest which
he sat waiting and behind which, from his vantage
point, he could partially view. Other young men
could be seen farther off, behind the other south-
ern, pillar-sectioned counter. Their being was a
dumb show to him. Yet, he knew that most were
gentle.

At the eastern, far end of the enclosure was a
center area of darkly polished desks and muted-
toned carpeting. These desks were for minor ex-
ecutives whose task was to interview new custo-
mers desiring loans, projecting deals or opening
new accounts. Behind these desks, facing center-
ward, embedded in the wall, shone the finely lather
and highly polished mechanism of the gargantuan,
steel vault’s door.

The young man sat on a couch in a desk area
which was situated immediately left of the en-
trance. A girl he did not know sat at one of the
two desks in this area. The bigger boss had not
yet arrived. He thought of people. He wondered

11
what they knew of pleasure, whether they had
any misgivings about it.

Fight, fight, fight for John McCarlin
Fight, fight, fight for all his men

And we'll buy a penny gun

And we'll make the dollys run

And we’ll never have a dolly any more

II

The bigger boss he was going to see had a
broken leg. It was almost healed now but the
injury still required crutches. Sometimes he would
be at his desk in the mortgage branch working in-
tently at his mortgage accounts, his Italian-made
addition-multiplication-division, multi-operational
calculating machine rapidly racketing, and a
thump would reach his ears telling him that the
bigger boss had come over from the main branch.
The bigger boss might thump past his desk to the
row of specially built cast-iron ledger-card file bins.
There the bigger boss would lean against the bin,
on the one good leg, and peruse certain mortgage
cards therein, card upon card. It never seemed
to bother him to dig and search; his leg, his
shoulders seemed indefatigable. Even seated at a
desk, checking and cross-checking master cards
and ledger cards and yards long machine-posting
sheets, the bigger boss seemed irreproachable,
oblivious of his numbling cumbersome cast.

The bigger boss’s name was Dolan. Coincident-
ly, that was the name of the younger man’s father,
the name he would have were he not a bastard.
His mother had once divulged the name to him.
Yet, that he and the bigger boss should be broth-
ers or cousins was a remote chance. Save for a
similar straightness of hair and a certain Celtic
frailty, they were not alike.

The men’s room was a small one-cubicle room
leading directly into the mortgage office, not plac-
ed in a less conspicuous place. Once the bigger
boss came maneuvering into the men’s room as the
young man was about to leave. It made him think
that the bigger boss must go to the bathroom regu-
larly, habitually, sometimes twice a day, during
business hours. The bigger boss’ skin was like
that; he could tell. Also he knew that the bigger
boss would get sunburned easily, despite the heavy
beard. Dolan reminded the young man of an Irish
grocery man he had worked for in his adolescence,
even though the grocery man had had no beardy
stubble. A major part of his job in the grocery
store (at least, the part he most remembered)
was to deliver milk in a monstrous, iron, rattling,
green wagon. Sometimes he would get such mo-

12

mentum pushing the green wagon that he must
have looked a fool running around the neighbor-
hood behind it. God knows how many bottles of
milk he broke, rattling over bumps. A few times
the wagon actually tipped over; it only had three
wheels. One time it plunged over when he was
running with it around a corner onto a cobble-
stone street. He was stunned. For a moment after
he and the wagon fell in a crash, he knew complete
happiness and freedom; until shapes and objects
and thoughts returned indiscriminately and with-
out meaning. Then it frightened him, lying on the
ground with the big cross bar handle pinning one
of his legs. He looked up to see faces of people
regarding him as they passed by. However, he
found himself able to pull his leg free and set the
wagon aright. For all their rattling, the two iron
sidewheels of the wagon never broke. Perhaps
that was the misfortune of it, they never did break.
It should have blown up, the wagon, the milk, the
cobble stones, the people, the streets, the grocéry
man; his bathroom, his six Irish Catholic children,
his two gentle pretty daughters!

The wagon was big enough to hold six cases of
milk and still have the crate-like cover closed.
Sometimes, when he delivered groceries on busy
afternoons, he would put an extra box or two of
groceries on the grate cover. Once, one such after-
noon, when he was going too fast the center front
wheel hit a rut in the asphalt and the big box of
groceries bounced off the top of the wagon. The
tilt came too suddenly for him to save it. Clorox
got onto the meat. He saved what he could of the
box of groceries and delivered it anyway. The
customer, a lady whom he knew and liked a lot,
was very nice about it and she and her beautiful
daughter tried to soothe him, guilty and embar-
rassed as he was over the loss, which was consid-
erable. He offered money towards reimbursement,
but they chided him jokingly and refused it. They
even offered him their customarily large tip. But
it was all destroyed, he knew. Delivering grocer-
ies to that lady and her daughter, entering their
house were the happy moments of his Saturday
afternoons. She, the lady, was the most distant
customer he had; she lived at least five miles off.
Living so far away, the lady would order an
enormous box or two of groceries on Saturdays to
last her family (including a husband, a brother
and a son) for a week. He never minded the long
trip. The lady was always so jovial and friendly
with him, comforting him with her singing, pung-
ent Belfast accent. He wished such a person could
be his mother. If chance had made her his mother
his life would be happy and sweeter. It was al-

THE REBEL

ways the mother and daughter who received him,
when he delivered; the men of the family were
never home on Saturday afternoons. For some
unaccountable reason, the daughter would always
tease him and jokingly flirt with him. She was
older by five or six years than he. Her teasing was
innocent, almost sympathetic, with no undertone
of cruelty or lasciviousness. He was in love with
her, in love with her frail and soft wide hipped
body. Deep waisted delicate soft and sensual Celtic
princess. Chestnut haired love! Somehow she was
teaching him about love. He was to learn of many
kinds.

For the short half-hours he stayed there each
Saturday afternoon unloading the groceries onto
the kitchen table, the two women spoiled him as
they must have spoiled their men. Even the sup-
erabundance of food they ordered seemed to at-
test to their heartiness and graciousness. The hap-
pinesses they offered was beyond his experience.

After what he had done, however, they could not
but despise him, he knew.

Often, rattling along, he could feel the shame
of life. He sometimes wore a white apron de-
livering which made him feel more conspicuous
when he reflected upon it. But, then the realiza-
tion that he was very young would soothe him.

III

He was kept very busy from the very first day.
There was a great amount of accounts to adjust.
It seemed that nobody had done the work for
weeks.

Adjusting the mortgagee’s accounts, he often
made mistakes. He feared that his incompetence
and his slowness could not long be tolerated, the
presence of the co-workers made it almost impos-
sible for him to raise his head up from his figures.
When the bigger boss appeared and he felt he was
being looked at, he could not move his head at all.

His one joy then, in the beginning, was that
after work while the weather was still warm and
days still pleasant he would go to a bar he had
found and drink a few beers before he picked his
wife up. The bar had real jazz records which he
played when he could. And for a while he felt
derelict and free.

But after many times even that was spoiled be-
cause he felt that the people in the bar were get-
ting to know him and he didn’t know what to do
about it. If he could have kept to himself it would
have been alright, but he would watch the drink-
ers and smile at them and enter their conversa-
tions and they would look at him, the stranger,

FALL, 1960

with congenial, blank faces, yet he never spoke
and they were confused.

IV

There was another young man in the mortgage
branch. The co-workers gossiped about him. The
other young man was a teller in the downstairs
floor—the subbranch, banking part of the small
two-story mortgage-branch building. He seemed
shy and sensitive, the other young man, yet the
co-workers called him “the goony bird.” “That
guy is crazy!” they said. “I spend three quarters
of an hour explaining and telling him how to do
something and then I say ‘now have you got
that? do you know it now” and he smiles and says
‘Yes’ and then I go away expecting him to do it
and he just stands there smiling to himself. Just
stands there smiling to himself! He doesn’t even
listen! I like to try and help a guy but he’s be-
yond me. Christ! I got enough of my own work
to do. I can’t be watching him every minute. He
winds up with a difference every day; and in the
end all of us downstairs have to try to help him
find it. He’s impossible! Just stands there smiling
to himself. All day long. The other day he gave
a customer five five dollar bills in exchange for a
five. That’s pretty good, hannh! He’s a corker!
He must be nuts or something.”

He felt sorry for the other young man because
he was abused. He would wonder what was the
matter, what the lonely teller was really like.

He did talk to him at the Christmas party. It
was a big affair held at a country club. Toward
the end of the evening he saw the teller sitting by
himself in an isolated corner, away from the
crowd. He was slightly drunk and the feeling of
the party and the Christmas good will ran through
him, and he approached the other. He said, “Tell
me what is your real vocation?” The other smiled
softly and answered, his eyes not looking partic-
uarly anywhere, “I’m a teller in the National
Band and Trust.” “Yes, I know,” he said, his voice
loosened by the liquor, “I know, but you look like
you must be something else too, what I mean is
what are you really?” The other answered smiling,
“I’m a teller in the National Bank and Trust,” and
then repeated it again, “I’m a teller in the National
Bank and Trust.”

Disappointed as he became with the other’s
answer, he could not wholly believe the answer.
He wished he had been able to communicate with
the other, to inspire trust in him.

The bank discharged the teller after the Christ-

13

mas holidays were over. He wondered where the
other young man went.

V

His legs were spread, V like, and his arms rest-
ed on them as he flipped the pages of the business
magazine he held in his two hands, leaning for-
ward. The bigger boss’ big blonde secretary
appeared in front of him, over him. She spoke to
him very cheerfully and personally, looking right
into his eyes, surprising him. She said, “Hello,
John! What, are you going to be transferred
here?” He answered something about he didn’t
know, that Dolan had called him over for the inter-
view. She said, “Good luck,” smiling, and turned
back into the inside office. A few minutes later the
bigger boss appeared in the inner offices’ doorway.
For the first time, he noticed the bigger boss’

beady blue eyes. He was also surprised to see that
the bigger boss had discarded the crutches for a
cane.

Inside, the bigger boss said to him, “John, I’ve
looked over your record and you seem to have done
very well on your test scores. But there is one
thing I am worried about. You don’t seem to say
very much.”

“T wouldn’t worry about it. I am just that way,”
he said, regretting his clumsy answer. “I can
speak,” he decisively added.

“I am pretty quiet myself, John,” Dolan answer-
ed. “Well,” he continued, “the people in the mort-
gage branch seem to like you well enough, and you
have done a good job with the Escrow accounts,
which were in a bad state before you came. In
April I’m going to put you in charge of Mortgage
Taxes. How would you like that?”

“That’s okay,” he answered.

T. M’s Solitude

they called him ‘T.M.’ when he was young,
before the black clad scythe bearer’s hand

in a parody, short and viper deadly, unstrung
events leading to the purchase of one horse...

named Dan.

they tell me a three foot splinter of seasoned pine

from the buggy tongue

sent him, after fourteen days, to this recline;
“unwept, unhonored, unsung,”

etc.

He’s been lying there for thirty some years now;
the shadow from a tall granite stone
never quite clears what was once his brow,

except in early autumn

and the low sand mound is winter-wind-swept .. .

he’s alone.

even Diane, whose breath quickened at the very

thought

of what he once was and could be,

is not there, but he doesn’t need her;

anyway, not as she needs him.

it’s good, too, that she can’t see that twenty-eight

foot cedar

whose every leaf and root and limb,
were first nourished by ‘T.M.’s solitude.
how do they say it? oh, yes,

‘limb from limb’.

14

—Tom JACKSON

THE REBEL

LARRYMAN

by LYMAN HARRIS

“Hold it!” Larry hollered.

My brother’s crazy. He’s really nuts. I bet he’s
been lost 18,000 times and I had to drop what I
was doing every time and go after him. He’s nuts.
I don’t mean like somebody insane. He just
dreams and wanders around and first thing you
know, he’s way the hell off and nobody knows
where he is.

You’d like Larry if you saw him. Especially if
you happen to be a girl. Girls go wild over him.
Older girls I mean... girls my age. I’m sixteen,

FALL, 1960

five years older than Larry, and he just swipes
all my girls. He looks like these kids on magazine
covers, except more real. His hair is sorta brown
and it won’t comb. It hangs down on his forehead
flat like he’s got bangs or something, and he’s
cross-eyed sometimes. Actually he can’t see too
well outa one eye and when he gets to concentra-
ting he looks cross-eyed. Larry’s always got teeth
missing. He busts ’em out falling outa trees and
stuff. Ol’ Larry, he won’t have a tooth in his

15

head by the time he’s twelve. And he’s still sorta
chubby. Not fat. Actually he’s beginning to get
skinny, but his cheeks and legs are still chubby.
His ears stick out a little too, and his pants are
always worn out at the knees, except on Sunday
of course. He’s always doing something, like fall-
ing out of a tree or getting lost, I mean. You’d
like ol’ Larry.

Last night topped ’em all. Boy, last night. We
were down in the country down near Montgomery
where my kinfolks live. And ol’ Larryman, he
likes it. He can’t stand Edna. She’s our cousin and
she’s his age, but he can’t stand her. She is sort of
a little brat. She’s got blonde hair, and I usually
like blondes—I dream about ’em—but she’s a hell-
cat. Rally a spoiled brat, and Larry can’t stand
her.

Ol Larry stays away from Edna. He doesn’t
even pay any attention to her. Soon as we get
there he trots over to Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg is
what old man Britt named his ranch, if you can
call it a ranch. It’s one of these old houses with a
leaky-looking roof and all the screens are pushed
in and stretched all over the place. They don’t
look like anybody kicked ’em in; they just look all
droopy and sagging, and I don’t know how they
got that way. There’s no paint on the house and
it looks sorta—well, it’s hard to describe, the
color I mean. It’s sorta like Larry’s tongue when
he’s sick at his stomach. Anyhow, old man Britt
named the whole mess Hattiesburg after his wife.

But this old house looks like it used to be some-
thing. Like a house Sherman would enjoy burn-
ing, you know. There’s a fence around it and at
both front corners there are two cement blocks
with a big concrete ball on each one of ’em. An’
a mossy looking eagle stands on the ball with his
wings out like he’s fixing to rip loose. But he
never does, and it gives me the willies.

Like I said, old man Britt owns the place. An’
old man Britt—I’d just as soon skip him. I used
to think he was a big deal when he would sit out
in front of my uncle’s store and whittle and he
wore these cowboy boots. But now I know. He’s
nuts. He actually thinks he’s Davy Crockett or
somebody. He bought him a big brown an’ white
horse like Trigger and he dresses up like a cowboy
and rides all over the place and everybody thinks
he’s crazy. But he don’t. He thinks he’s the cat’s
meow when he does stuff like that.

And Mrs. Britt, boy. She looks like she’s had
TB for about a hundred years. She’s real skinny
and her hair is all balled up on top like one of those
old bed posts, and she keeps working all the time.
I bet she’s a hundred and fifty at least but she just

16

keeps on working. Old man Britt’ll be out riding
that stupid horse all over his cotton plants and
everything with everybody laughing at him but
she’ll keep on bringing in eggs and milking the
cows and doing stuff like that.

She don’t have any help. She’s got this old
negro named Green, that’s all the name he’s got,
but he isn’t any help. He just sits on that busted
up old sidewalk that runs around the house and
don’t do nothing. He just sits there, on the side-
walk. And nobody comes to see him. There isn’t
anybody to come to see him, I don’t guess. He
didn’t have any kids and he doesn’t even know who
his folks are. That’s why his name is just Green.
Mrs. Britt gives him a little money and lets him
stay in this old shack out back, but mostly he just
sits there on that cracked sidewalk.

Well, this is what Larry goes ape over. Ol’
Green and the sidewalk and those creepy eagles
over him. I could understand if Green was like
Uncle Remus or somebody and told a bunch of
sexy stories, but he’s not. He just sits there and
lets the flies eat him while he eats moon pies and
drinks RC’s. Moon pies and RC’s, that’s all he
eats, besides sardines. I bet his stomach is so
rotten if he drank coffee or something just that
strong, it would squirt out his navel. He’s pathetic.
Boy, he’s pathetic.

I don’t like Larry hanging around him all the
time. I’m afraid he'll pick up bad habits like
picking his nose in front of everybody or some-
thing, but Larry likes him so much I don’t have
the guts to make him quit.

Everybody always makes fun of old Green. You
know—when they scare the hound dogs with fire-
crackers, they try to scare old Green, too. And
Larry gets mad if he’s around. I don’t know why.
Green can’t remember ol’ Larry’s name from one
time to the next, but Larry still gets mad when
they pick on him. You gotta watch Larry when
he gets mad, even if he is little. He got mad at me
once, I mean really mad, and he hit me with a beer
bottle.

Ol Larry got pretty mad yesterday. Some
smart alecks came and they told old Green they
would give him fifty cents if he would run to the
dam road and back as fast as he could. Green
jumped at the chance since fifty cents was ’bout
two years wages to him. He took off running and
these two guys followed him, laughing and cheer-
ing him on. It was pretty funny-looking when I
think about it, cause Green runs sorta like a chick-
en with athlete’s foot, because of his rotten toes,
I guess. Anyhow they hollered at him all the way
to the road and all the way back, and it musta been

THE REBEL

a mile. Right in front of Uncle Ed’s store old
Green was laying it on, hurrying back to that
sidewalk and his fifty cents. Just then Snake
Vines and his wife came out with this big load of
groceries and Green piled right smack into Mrs.
Vines. Boy. Groceries everywhere. Green picked
it all up in about two seconds and nearly wore out
Mrs. Vine’s dress dusting it off. Snake didn’t say
anything, but just stared at ol’ Green until I
thought his eyes would bleed. Green didn’t do
much staring back. He said, “Scuse me, Boss.
Scuse me!” about 18,000 times and sorta sashayed
back to his sidewalk. Snake just kept staring-at
him while Mrs. Vines put the groceries in their
truck. And Green crawled about halfway down
one of these cracks in that busted up old sidewalk
and looked at his feet like he was trying to hypno-
tize them. But ol’ Larry. He stared back at Snake
the whole time. I think he would have cracked
Snake with a rock or something if I hadn’t stop-
ped him. Like I said, you gotta watch Larry
when he gets mad.

I brushed ol’ Larry’s hair down in his eyes so
he couldn’t stare any more, but Snake didn’t stop.
He spit in the dirt there in front of the store and
mumbled something to the guys standing around
and they started spitting and staring too. Pretty
soon Snake mumbled something again and they
all nodded their heads and then old Snake got in
his truck and nearly busted the hinges off slam-
ming the door.

Everybody hates Negroes down there, anyhow.
Even Uncle Ed and he’s a good guy. If two
Negroes are boxing on TV, he roots for the light-
est colored one, even if the light one is from
France or someplace way off. And if both the
Negroes are solid black, Uncle Ed’s for the one
in the white trunks. He hates ’em.

That’ll help explain what happened last night.
Everybody hating the Negroes, I mean. They
had a big meeting in the field across from Uncle
Ed’s house. Everybody came all decked out in
sheets and all that stuff, and I thought it was
against the law but nobody stopped them. There
wasn’t anybody to stop them, I don’t guess, be-
cause the sheriff was there with a sheet on too.
Everybody was there, but the preacher. I guess
he was home watching TV or reading his Bible
or something, because he was the only one not
there.

Ol Larry and I went over. Larry was pretty
young to be going, I guess, but everybody was
there and I figured I’d take care of him. That’s
what I get for figuring. I should have locked him
in the house or something.

FALL, 1960

Well, like I said, we went and, boy, they got
to raising hell. It was just like one of their
church meetings except nobody was washing feet.
Instead they were setting fires and burning these
stupid torches. They got to carrying on about
Negroes and called ’em all kinda things and just
raised hell. I couldn’t figure why because old
Green was the only Negro left around there and
he wasn’t hurting anything. And just when they
started, I looked around and Larry was gone!
It scared the hell out of me at first, but then I
figured he must have gone home, so I didn’t
worry.

Well, I couldn’t tell what was going on, but
everybody lit torches. I mean everybody! The
whole place was lighted up like a football field
or something. Then they started walking and I
hung with ’em, sorta out on the edge because
the whole thing gave me the willies.

We walked on down by Uncle Ed’s store and
I figured we would go on down the road like a
parade and have some fun, but they turned in!
They went right past the store and by old man
Britt’s ranch towards Green’s shack.

All of a sudden the mob stopped and I thought
of something. Holy Cow! I got down on my
hands and knees and crawled like a roach under
’em just as fast as I could. I crawled through the
whole stinking mob like mad, and good gravey!
It was just what I had been afraid of, except
worse.

There was old Green inside his shack with his
door locked and you could see that he had every-
thing piled up in the door. Bed and table and
everything. And he was peeking out the window
with his eyes about eight feet wide. And out in
front of the door was ol’ Larry with a BB gun!

Everybody was sorta shuffling their feet like
a bunch of bulls and they started moving on to-
ward the shack and ol’ Larry gritted his teeth
like Humphrey Bogart and hollered, “Hold it!’
and shot that BB gun up in the air. I heard the
BB go up and hit on top of Mrs. Britt’s roof and
it didn’t even sound as loud as a worm’s squeal.

Well, that was it. Snake Vines went after
Larry and I took off to get there first, but this
guy tripped me and I landed right with my face
in the dirt and really got a mouth full. Every-
body was boiling and the big guy that tripped me
sat on my back.

But ol’ Larry, he didn’t let up. Old Larryman.
Snake came after him and Larry shot him with
the BB gun and then, boy, then Larry really sur-
prised him. He took that gun by the barrel and

Continued on page 27)
17

“The Women” (Lithograph) by JIM ROPER

18 THE REBEL

THE REBEL REVIEW

“The Czar’”’

Peter the Great: Emperor Of All Russia, Ian Grey. J.
P. Lippincott Company. $7.50.

One of the most dynamic characters ever to
step upon the human stage was Peter the Great
of Russia: a man gifted with an unquenchable
energy and spurred by an ambitious desire. This
great czar planned, labored, and played on a huge
scale to see his backward and semi-barbarous
land become one of the most powerful and re-
spected nations of the world.

His youth was marked by intrigue and vio-
lence. As a child, Peter saw his friends murdered
before his eyes during the revolt of the Streltsi,
and this proved to be a strong formative influence
in his life. It taught him the meaning of danger
and fear.

As czar of all Muscovy, Peter had a quenchless
ambition to his country in the galaxy of stars
along with such countries as France, England,
and the Dutch Netherlands. Determined to
“Europeanize” Russia, Peter became obsessed
with the idea of opening ‘‘windows to the west’’.
By this, he meant ice-free seaports through which
European trade, culture, and traders could enter
his country.

Because of his ambition for his country and
his quenchless curiosity concerning navigational
and technical processes, Peter was to change the

FALL, 1960

trend of Russian History. In 1697, the czar
undertook a tour to study the civilization of Eu-
rope at closer range. Upon his return, the Rus-
sian people were shaken from their deep-seated
conservatism by a succession of imperial decrees.
With his own hand, Peter clipped the long beards
of his courtiers while tailors stood by to clip the
Muscovite clothing of the nobles, thus marking
the beginning of European customs into his coun-
try. To orientate his subjects to the culture of
Europ, the czar sent young Russians abroad to
study and invited Europeans to his country. When
the people resisted his will, Peter used the knout
and scaffold to emphasize his decrees.

A giant in mental attributes, Peter was also
a giant in physical attributes. Massively built,
Peter stood an imposing seven feet. His hand-
some face was dominated by his keenly intelli-
gent eyes. The two characteristics which marked
Peter and his reign were his ever abounding
energy and the grand scale upon which he en-
deavored to fulfill his ambitions.

In Peter the Great, Ian Grey has presented a
graphic biography of considerable note. His per-
ceptive view of one of history’s most challenging
figures gives one a deeper understanding of the
Russian people and their background. Mr. Grey’s
versatile style and concrete historical data gives
the reader the most delightful history lesson in a
long, long while. ...

- FLIP

19
(Woodcut) by AL DUNKLE

THE REBEL

““A Novel and Two Violin Cases”’

The Winter Rider, Berry Fleming. Philadelphia: J. P.
Lippincott Co. $3.50.

This book is about a novelist, William Wesley
Johns. Mr. Johns has just completed a novel, we
are told, and this novel is certain to be a bestseller.
It is to be serialized in a national magazine; there
will probably be a movie, and maybe even a tele-
vision series—in short, fame and fortune are just
around the corner for Mr. Johns, who until now
has scraped along with neither one nor the other.
So Mr. Johns is very happy as he starts out one
fine winter morning to put his manuscript on a
plane (true to the tradition that writers have no
conception of the importance of time, the novel is
later than it should have been, and unless it is
placed on the particular plane which is Mr. Johns’
objective, the reader senses, there will be dire
results and an unhappy ending for the hero.)

Naturally, something happens to prevent the
manuscript being placed on the proper plane at
the proper time—actually, several somethings.
First, Mr. Johns picks up a hitchhiker—Jo, who
is a female and a musician and carries two violin
cases with her at all times; moreover, Jo’s front
teeth protrude, giving her a “diamond-shaped
smile.”

Then the car, after a few preliminary groans
and rattles, stops; Mr. Johns’ looking at the motor
does not help, as he knows nothing about motors,
nor does Jo’s playing Bach on one of her violins.
The car refuses to move; this would not have
been such a calamity in a civilized part of the
country, but this road happens to be in the east-
ern part of North Carolina, which, the book im-
plies, is at least as bad as being in the wilds of
Africa. There are no houses, no people, and no
other cars—there is, however, a telephone wire,
which Mr. Johns proposes to follow, leaving the
girl in the car. The girl refuses to be left, as she
also refuses to leave the two violins; and, as Mr.
Johns refuses to leave his manuscript, they trudge
into the woods, following the telephone wire—one
man, one manuscript, two violin cases (contain-
ing violins), and one girl with a diamond-shaped
smile.

In the woods they meet an Indian, with a re-
volver, riding on a mule, who turns out to be a
doctor (the Indian, not the mule). They meet an
old man who needs help burying his dead son;
and, finally, they take a ride down a wild river
with the Indian doctor—a most uncomfortable
ride in the midst of winter. This accounts for
the title, The Winter Rider, I suppose; unless the
girl is The Winter Rider.

FALL, 1960

All this time, the girl Jo has been singing the
praises of art—real art, that is. Art that is fav-
orably received by the public is not true art; since
Mr. Johns’ new novel is destined to be a bestseller,
it is not true art. Therefore, at the conclusion of
the wild boat ride, Mr. Johns consigns his precious
manuscript to a watery grave in the river and
goes to a hotel and goes to bed. The girl disap-
pears.

Berry Fleming wrote of this book: “It wasn’t
written to prove a thesis, but to ‘be’.”” It seemed
to me that the book did have a thesis, a theory
that true art is too abstract to be understood and
appreciated by the great majority of the people.
It seems to me that the main purpose of writing,
especially, is communication; and if there is no
communication, the purpose for which the work
was written has not been achieved, and it might
behoove the writer to examine his techniques and
style. I realize that the reader, as well as the
writer, must contribute to this process of com-
munication, and that very often the reader is at
fault. This does not mean, however, that the
writer may not be wrong.

In other words, the fact that a book is a best-
seller does not necessarily mean that it is a lousy
book; nor does the fact that the American public
rejects a book mean that the book is not a great
work of art.

SHERRY MASKE

“Growing Up Is Hard”’

New Face in the Mirror, Yael Dayan. Cleveland:
World Publishing Company. 1959. $3.50.

This biographical novel by a young Israeli girl
contains much that is interesting, a fair amount
of good writing, and a large helping of wasted
self-pity. Miss Dayan’s theme has been worn
thin by too much use—that growing up is a hard,
discouraging and disheartening process, with oc-
casional and hard-to-come-by compensations.

Her heroine, Ariel Ron, is so thinly disguised
that she would have done better to call her Yael
Dayan. Her story details the intensely and some-
times pathologically subjective experiences and
feelings of a girl who undergoes two years of
military training in the Israeli Army. The girl,
of course, is herself. Her thoughts about herself
and what happens to her are often complicated,
childish, and, on occasion, too silly to make very
good reading.

But the insight Miss Dayan gives us into what
army discipline does to women is worth having
and is well presented. Her descriptions of life in

21

Israel, when she forgets herself, contain admir-
able and vivid passages, and the familiarity with
which she uses place-names that are enshrined in
the religious conceptions of the western world
lends a refreshing intimacy to some of her scenes.

She has trouble making personal relationships
interesting or even believable. There is too much
Ariel Ron. Completely irresistable, every man
she meets falls in love with her—which does not
do much for her modesty, since the book is writ-
ten in the first person. Passages like “Our two
beautiful bodies enjoyed each other in the golden
sand under the light of the moon” do not improve
matters. When all her conflicts with herself and
practically everyone else in her story finally re-
solve themselves, you are not quite sure whether
you care one way or the other.

Despite its faults the book shows promise that
Yael Dayan might some day emerge as an impor-
tant and interesting writer. She has a great sub-
ject to write about—the emergence of Israel as a
national entity of extraordinary influence and
integrity. On the basis of further personal ex-
periences we can hope that she will produce a
better book than New Face in the Mirror on her
next attempt.

Dr. EDGAR HIRSHBERG

“Strength Is a Gentle Thing . . .”

The Hands of Cormac Joyce, Leonard Wibberley. G. P.
Putnam’s Sons. 1960. $2.95.

In The Hands of Cormac Joyce, Leonard Wib-
berley presents to the Public another rendition
of the venerable literary theme Man versus the
Sea. It is a story without ornamentation and
with an uncomplicated plot. The brief novel deals
with the effects of a severe storm on the life of
a young boy living on a sparsely populated island
off the coast of Ireland.

The primary account of the book is young
Jackie Joyce’s covetous admiration of the gentle
strength of his father’s hands. So devoted to his
father, Jackie develops a ceremony of dipping his
hands into a blessed well so that he upon adult-
hood will have the same gentle, but taciturn
strength. Before the storm, Cormac Joyce in-
jures one of his hands while docking his skiff,
but refuses to leave the island for safety on the
mainland.

During the storm, Cormac valiantly protects
his family and home in spite of his injured hand,
causing Jackie to realize that strength is a qual-
ity that man must create and nurture within
himself. ;

22

Mr. Wibberley’s treatment is so quiet that it
is mediocre, and so simple that it is insignificant.
He does better with his whimsical, usual fantasies
(such as Beware the Mouse, which appeared both
in book form and as the movie The Mouse that
Roared). They are a pleasure to read and, being
unrealistic, tax no beliefs (thus minimizing crit-
icism). In The Hands of Cormac Joyce, little of
that mystic quality or beauty or realism that we
have come to know about Ireland through
O’Casey, Joyce, O’Flaherty. This story could be
anywhere. By picturing Cormac Joyce as not
the best fisherman; or the wisest man on the
island; and by reiterating the axiom that Cormac
Joyce “. .. never answered questions which would
in time supply their own answer... .’’; does not
render Joyce the Common Man, but just common
characterization. The closest Mr. Wibberley comes
to capturing lyricism is his representing the
storm in Michael Reece’s children story that be-
gan, “The young trees were breaking and the
old trees were bending and the giants were coming
into the land.”

JACK WILLIS

“The Cloister or The Castle’’

The Nunnery, Dorothy Charques. New York: Double-
day and Company. $3.95.

For her latest novel, Dorothy Charques has
chosen a theme synonymous with English history
—the struggle between Church and Monarch.
The Nunnery is the story of Jane Ingham, a rich,
young heiress, who has been placed in the Cokehill
Nunnery under the guardianship of the Lady
Prioress. It is here in the restful solitude of
Cokehill that Jane is to decide between the clois-
tered life of a nun and that of English Nobility,
and upon her decision rests the future of Cokehill
Priory for Jane has wealth enough to provide for
the nunnery amply. Her decision is complicated
by the appearance of Sir John Acock, owner of
the priory lands and dashing member of Queen
Anne Boleyn’s entourage. How and why Jane

‘reaches the decision she does provides educational

entertainment for the reader.

Although Miss Charques has handled her his-
torical subject well, she has failed in the develop-
ment of her characters. Jane, whom the plot
supposedly revolves around, seems to be rather
like a guest who makes a dutiful, but unenthusi-
astic appearance during the cocktail hour.

—FLIP

THE REBEL

“The Waiting One” (Woodcut) by KAREN McLAWHORN

FALL, 1960 23

“TI stood still and was a tree amid

99
the wood. . .
A Primer of Ezra Pound, M. L. Rosenthal. New York:
Macmillan Company. 1960. $2.50.

This small, compact book is an introduction to
Ezra Pound—a short, brilliant excursion into the
framework of his poetic genius. It is the key
which will ultimately allow the interested reader
to enter a “. .. radiant world in which one
thought cuts through another with clean edge, a
world of moving energies.”

A brief review of Pound’s early development
and his participation in the Imagist Movement is
presented; the author then explains and inter-
prets the poet’s basic areas of thought and their
relationship to his major poem sequences “Mau-
berley’’ and the “Cantos.” Throughout Rosen-
thall’s approach to Pound, there is an awareness
of the man and his poetry as an integrated unit:
to Pound... “poetry bespeaks the values of
whole peoples...” and, more specifically, his
own values, ideals, and life-purposes. This is dra-
matically evident in Canto 14 as the poet spews
out his own hatred for the banking system of mod-
ern civilization:

“the soil living pus, full of vermin,

dead maggots begetting live maggots,
slum owners,

usurers squeezing crab lice...”

The thesis which develops Pound’s complete self-
work integration is clearly written and illustrat-
ed; it brings about a definite understanding of
much of the difficult and complex aspects of
Pound’s more serious poetry. In fact, the whole
of the book aims at intensifying the reader’s ap-
preciation of Ezra Pound’s poetry through an
understanding of his basic motives and literary
concepts. The Primer of Ezra Pound has suc-
ceeded in its aim quite admirably.

DENYSE DRAPER

“More Snopes”

The Mansion, William Faulkner. New York: Random
House. 1959. $4.50.

This volume, the third of Faulkner’s trilogy,
ties together and brings to an end the Snopes
invasion of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.
Faulkner writes well about the South which he
knows so well, but he is not easy to read. If pos-
sible, one should read the other two books of the
trilogy, The Hamlet, The Town before he reads
The Mansion. It is not that there is any particu-

FALL, 1960

lar continuity which would be missed, since each
of the novels is a unit in itself, but reading them
in order will lead to a better understanding of the
story, the characters and the author since all have
matured with the years.

The Mansion traced the careers of Mink Snopes,
Linda Snopes Kohl, and Flem Snopes and comes
to a conclusion with the death of Flem at the
hands of Mink with the tacit consent of Linda.
Not one of the main characters is admirable, all
are unreal in their entirety, yet all contain some
universal characteristics.

In some ways this concluding volume is the best
of the three since it brings out clearly the conflict
of Good and Evil as they clash on Earth, and yet
Faulkner shows Good as triumphing on its own
merits and not over Evil, while Evil eliminates
Evil by its own nature. Faulkner is not specific-
ally pointing out a moral lesson, but in writing a
book which has portrayed Humanity as it is, he
has let Humanity shape its own destiny and has
shown even if by indirection, that Truth and Jus-
tice will be eventually eliminated.

Faulkner has painted some unforgettable char-
acters—true to life, but exaggerated somewhat
for the effect. Every community has had its
Snopeses to a certain degree, and as long as there
are Snopes there will be Evil and vice versa. The
heartening thing about it all is that although Evil
may win a few temporary victories it will be elimi-
nated in the end.

Dr. J. ROY PRINCE

“German Poetry”

An Anthology of German Poetry from Holderlin to
Rilke in English Translation with German Originals.
Edited by Angel Flores. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor,
1960. $1.45.

This anthology of German poetry is the first of
its kind that I have read. Of particular interest
to me, as a rather weak student of German, is the
presence of the German original following the
translation. This is the first opportunity I have
had to make an immediate, complete, and direct
comparison between the original poem and the
English translation without referring to several
different books.

The variety of poems included in the anthology
is very wide, and therefore interesting and ap-
pealing to all tastes. There are long poems and
short poems, lyric poems and narrative poems,
classical poems and very modernistic poems.

Most of the translations are extremely well

25

Untitled (Lithograph) by Jim ROPER

26 THE REBEL

done. In most of the cases, the translator cap-
tured not only the thought and spirit of the orig-
inal poem, but also the rhyme, rhythm, and meter.
In others, a poem which had a definite rhyming
pattern in the original German became blank.
verse or even free verse in English. Not being
an expert, nor even a beginner, in translating
German poetry into English metrical forms, I
cannot truly appreciate nor evaluate the difficul-
ties involved in such translations. I realize, how-
ever, that there must be many occasions when a
translator must sacrifice form to thought and con-
tent, to meaning and message.

There is one mystery, however, that I have
been unable to solve. There are a dozen or more
poems, written by various German poets, but all
translated by Edwin Morgan, which were trans-
lated into a Scotch dialect. So far as I can see,
the original poem is not in a dialectal German.
Other poems translated by Edwin Morgan are
written in the Queen’s English. Why these few
should be in Scotch is a most interesting mystery.

I have enjoyed this book very much because
the contents would appeal to every and any mood,
and because they introduced to me poets and
poems which are new friends.

Dr. FRANCES R. WINKLER

LARRYMAN

(Continued from page 17)

cracked Snake right in the gut! Man! He did
him in. Ol’ Snake just flopped when Larry did
that. Right down in the dirt holding himself.

And everybody stopped. It was crazy. They
all stopped and just stood there looking. They
stared at Snake lying in the dirt and they stared
at Larry. Ol’ Larry gritted his teeth at them.
Then one of them threw his torch down and
walked off sorta ashamed and disgusted looking.
Like he was disgusted with himself. They
watched him go and then they all walked off
just like that. The whole mob, even ol’ Snake.
And I could see them throwing their torches
down gradually as they went.

Boy! That Larryman! He’s nuts!

FALL, 1960

STEINBECK’S

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28 THE REBEL

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FALL, 1960 29

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30 THE REBEL

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32 THE REBEL

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